Cape Plumbago

Cape Plumbago
Plumbago auriculata syn. P. capensis

… for true-blue blooms, the color of summer skies

Common name: Cape Plumbago

Latin Name: Plumbago auriculata syn. P. capensis

Design Tip: Use towards the front of a border between other mid-sized bedding plants. It is especially effect draping over the edge of raised beds. Planted in mass below rose bushes or garden trees, makes a graceful informal groundcover. The delicate hue combines easily with any color combination, but when grown with silver-foliaged lambs ear and white annuals, it provides a cooling scene.

Form: The tender perennial is used as annual in freeze-prones zones. Its limp stems mound over each other and cascade outwardly. In frost-prone areas with light freezes, it behaves as a herbaceous perennial.

Size and Hardiness: It serves as a mid-sized annual bedding plant in freeze-prone zones, but occasionally returns from roots in spring after a mild Metroplex winter. In its native South Africa and other zones 9-11, it reaches hedge proportions.

Flowers: The species has clusters of 1/2 " sky blue discs on the tips of each stem. The improved blue cultivar 'Royal Cape' provides more bloom with richer color than the species. The white cultivar, 'Alba', has pure white blooms.

Soil: Requires well-drained, humus-rich moist soil. It can tolerate dry earth when well established, but blooms best with irrigation.

Light Exposure: Part shade to full sun

Grooming: Can be grown maintenance-free, but deadheading speeds re-bloom.

Propagation: Cuttings can be taken in early fall for interior cultivation or entire root balls can be potted up before first frost, to be carried over in greenhouse conditions. Self-sown seedlings may develop in beds following the last year's plantings, when conditions accommodate germination. But self-sown seedlings of a cultivar may not return as flower-productive as the parent was.

Snippets: There is no lavender cast to the baby blue hue. A clear true blue bloom is rare at the best of times, but all the more refreshing on a hot summer day. Sitting near a large patio pot of Cape Plumbago, dwarf white zinnias and Powis Castle artemisia seems to cool the air.
And . . .
As well as the white and pastel blue Cape Plumbago (Plumbago auriculata), there is the true royal-blue summer bloom of the perennial groundcover Ceratostigma plumbaginoides. Although related to the winter-tender cape, Ceratostigman is a hardy perennial that multiplies rampantly by underground stolons in loose or sandy soil.

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